Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Free Form Comments

Say whatever you want to in the comments to this post -- random, off topic thoughts, ideas, suggestions, questions, recommendations, criticisms (which can be anonymous), surveys, introductions if you have never commented before, personal news, self-promotion, requests to be added to the blog roll and so on. If I forget, remind me. Remember these comments can be directed at all the readers, not just me.

ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy.

AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore.

You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.

WRITING FOR THIS BLOG. If I see a big free form comment that deserves more attention, I will pull it and make it its own post, with a label on the post and on the sidebar that will always link to all the posts you write for this blog. I am always looking for reviews of games, tv, movies, music, books and iPhone apps.

9 comments:

scott91777
said...

Hey folks, a couple of things:

First of all, I am currently reading Mark Voger's The Dark Age: Grim, Great & Gimmicky Post-Modern Comics. It actually works as a pretty good, if less 'academic', companion piece to Geoff's 'How to Read Superhero Comics and Why' in that examines the same era but goes into a lot of the absurdity that came along with it as well.

Sample line: "I remember the day Superman died, back in 92" you may tell your grandkids one day "It was in Superman 75. What a beauty! It was polybagged with a poster and a trading card and an obituary and an arm band and stickers-- all for 2.50 [which is only a bargain in hindsight] Those were the days."

Also, within this book, I read a piece on Marvel's series The 'Nam and, if anyone here would like to write a piece on it (particularly if you also have a knowledge of the history of war comics in general), I think it would make a great bit to put under the "Rememberance of Comics Past" banner and if I may remind everyone, I leave that open to any one who wants to dig out some old issue or long forgotten series for some analysis.

And lastly, can anyone reccomend a really good Motown Boxed Set? Something that would give me a good overview of the label in its golden age?

Reminds me of ten or so years ago, when I read Peter Biskind's 'Easy Riders, Raging Bulls', about the 1960s/1970s movies and then John Pierson's 'Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes', which flowed kind of nicely from that. But, not feeling that the story was complete, I found this

Batman and Robin #4 lunchbreak-read reactions: I knew Philip Tan would be bad, but secretly hoped he'd be better than that, whew. Don't know if you're planning on a post, Geoff, but I'd be interested in your thoughts re: Morrison vs. Miller and this issue. It canonizes the "Lose the hood - you're Robin" bit from All-Star Batman.

Batman and Robin 4 is out? Need to pick that up!I would also like to declare that- since I now have an active google account- that Scott91777 shall hence forth be known in comment threads as (trumpet fanfare)- Scott McDarmont!

James: Morrisons Batman and Robin has not moved me to write. You are right that the Miller Morrison fight continues there but Morrison is getting so pummeled (how else to explain how this is no where near as good as All Star Superman) it is kind of depressing to talk about. Someone else is welcome to though.

guys -- where do spoiler warnings go? I put one in the title of my Inglourous Basterds post but it seems like folks are missing it there. Should it put the warning in the first sentence of a post maybe?

A very telling anecdote from the 'Dark Age' of comics: Following the success of 1989's Batman movie and the subsequent popularity of a 'darker' Batman and other characters, J. O'Barr had trouble getting his Black and White 'The Crow' printed because there was A SHORTAGE OF BLACK INK! The Darke Age was LITERALLY DARKER!

About Me

Geoff Klock has a big degree from a fancy-pants university. He wrote some books on superheroes and poetry like 10 years ago. Also essays on film, and TV and teaching. You have Google, right? He spoke at the Met once, and inspired a name of a villain in Matt Fraction's Casanova, which is a really good comic book. He made a crazy mash up of like 200 movie and TV clips quoting Hamlet. Geoff teaches mostly writing, but also Old Brit Lit and Film, at BMCC. He rides a bicycle to get there. He is very good at Facebook?

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Jason Powell has taken on the yeoman's job of doing an issue by issue analysis of Chris Claremont's 17 year Uncanny X-Men run in an effort to make me feel bad for saying Morrison invented all kinds of things he did not in his New X-Men run, and for spelling Claremont "Clairmont" in my superhero book.

Scott McDarmont (Scott91777) is an Instructor Of English at Radford University, Radford VA, an avid reader of books by guys named Chuck, he usually “waits for the trade” on comics unless Frank Miller is somehow involved. He owns more Def Leppard CDs than Bob Dylan CDs and he is ‘Ok’ with this and, while he may answer different publicly, he secretly feels that The Empire Strikes Back is the best movie ever made. He also feels that there are two kinds of people in the world: Indiana Jones people and John McClane people. He considers himself an Indiana Jones person

Jill Duffy, girl reporter, is a professional writer and editor in New York. She spent five years covering video game development in both San Francisco and London, examining the art, science, and business of the industry, and in 2006 was named one of the top 100 most influential women in the game industry. Her work has appeared in The Examiner newspaper in San Francisco, where she was the food section editor, as well as Game Developer, Gamasutra.com, Intelligent Enterprise, DigitalTrends.com, and several other publications. She holds a BA in English from the University at Buffalo. Indeed, she is on the Twitter and also keeps a blog about food.

Andy Bentley is a graphic designer in upstate New York. The first series of Batman movies got him in a comic book store and the DC animated series made him a life long fan. His senior thesis was a short film on the culture of comic books. Animal Man, Starman, and Preacher are among his favorite comic runs. He is an avid toy collector and enjoys playing basketball, mash-ups, karaoke and dark beers. He will be sequestered most of September with The Beatles: Rock Band.